On the higher ground beyond the marshes the air was clear from fog. Here
were knolls surmounted by clumps of beech-wood, the ground beneath the
trees rusty with last year’s leaves, and the trunks of the beeches
themselves bare, lofty, and processional, their clubbed heads shaven
against the winter sky. From these knolls one looked down over the brown
mirror of the floods, that surrounded the block of the village with the
factory and the ancient abbey, and that were crossed until the eye lost
it in distance by the great dyke carrying the road and the perspective
of stark telegraph poles. But this was only when the fog had lifted.
When the fog lay heavy, one looked down upon a white plain of cloud,
blackened by a great smear and a fading trail where the smoke of the
factory-chimneys rose to mix with it (the chimneys whose summits
sometimes reared themselves through the fog like three giant fingers),
and concealing beneath it who could tell what stress and labour, what
hope or suffering, what secrecy of purpose, what web of mingled and
obscurely tending lives?
On the higher ground amongst the beeches stood the big Georgian house
belonging to Malleson, a director of the factory and local squire of the
district. It was built to turn its back upon the flooded region, and
from the front windows and colonnaded façade the view stretched away
over the gentle rise and fall of the midland country, the dun fields,
clumps of bare trees, grey sky, and cawing rooks,—a landscape in dead
and uneventful levels. Malleson was very well satisfied with it. His
wife was not. Malleson found satisfaction in the dark tangle of the
sleeping hedgerow and the dying brake, and was happy if with gun and
spaniel he might wait at the top of a ride for the bolt of a rabbit, or
might stand watching woodcutters at their cleavage, and, passing on,
come upon a plough-team of his own horses straining across the shoulder
of a hill under a wide heaven. He was content to lean over a gate
looking across a bean-field, for so long a while that, like some
animals, he took on the colour of his surroundings; a hare ran amongst
the beans, sat listening upon its haunches, then ran again a little
farther; a jay flashed blue between two clumps of hawthorn,—but
Malleson, whose interest was professional, and who would never have
owned to a more sentimental satisfaction, did not like jays in his woods
any better than the presence of hares among his young beans.
Christine Malleson, his wife, hated the country, hated the Midlands,
hated Malleson Place, Malleson’s spaniel, Malleson’s friends, Malleson’s
relations, clothes, politics, point of view, position in the county,
religion, appearance, conversation, and occupations. The only thing she
liked about him was his money. In very early days, fifteen years ago,
before she knew better, she had given him a son; but in the horror of
that one experience,—which had, progressively, infringed upon her
comfort, outraged her vanity, terrified her nearly out of her wits in
one brief concentrated nightmare, and finally drawn down upon her the
irony of Malleson’s joy, and of remarks designed to please her, smiling,
congratulatory, immemorial, consecrated, fatuous,—all that had taught
her never to allow the experiment to be repeated. The months that
Malleson obliged her to spend in the country were one long sulky
lassitude; she rarely set foot beyond the garden, and in cool weather
spent her days in overheated rooms; discontented and fastidious, picking
up a book, reading the beginning, and, if that interested her, turning
to read the end, but always too languid to read the middle; sleeping on
her sofa after luncheon, resting after tea, amusing herself by frequent
change of clothes, sometimes staring out of the window while her
be-ringed hand held back the muslin curtain, watching for the post that
might cheer her by bringing some phrase of flattery or homage, after
which event remained only the long empty hours before she found herself,
arrived there by some monotonous law of routine, sitting at dinner
opposite Malleson.
She never listened to what he said, and indeed when they were alone he
spoke very little. She usually leaned her head upon her hand as though
she were weary, a head of lovely shape, drooping gracefully; and picked
at burnt almonds, or held a cigarette to her lips, for she had a habit
that maddened Malleson, of smoking almost throughout a meal. It maddened
him, yet he owned that his wife was a very graceful woman, sitting there
languid, spoilt, indefinably but flowingly dressed, a woman unlike the
wives of other country squires, and within his very scrupulous heart he
contested that he preferred her thus, that a woman was designed as an
ornament, not for the sturdier business of companionship. He knew that
she despised him, and, humble, accepted her estimate, ranging himself
low, not putting into the opposite balance the esteem in which men held
him. Having long since ceased to think that his conversation might
attract her attention, only his loyalty withheld him from admitting to
himself that he looked forward to the relief of the moment when she
would nod to him and trail out of the room, and he might throw his legs
over the arm of his chair with a pipe and a book until he began to
reflect it was time for him to go to bed.